FFS! People need to stop treating Anon as some organized group.

If a flash mob helped a lady across the street in LA and another lynched a man in New York, would you consider them the same group of people?

Serioiusly, its just like old time lynchings they used to have in the old days when a bunch of people got together and doled out random justice... Often picking the wrong person to extract it on (like the time a bunch of laid of car workers in Detroit killed a Korean man because they were pissed off at Japanese carmakers in the 1980's).

I couldn't help but reword this in my head as:

"Sudetanland-Germany deal accidentally protects Poland?"

That didn't really work out that well for Poland...

BTW the UK referendum to do away with the US style of voting is happening in May.

Time for a history lesson...

In a first past the post two parties will always dominate. Doesn't matter what names or their policies are, but a 3rd party always has math against it.

Oddly enough the two oldest democracies that are still around today went with FFP because voting had never really been tried before (UK and the USA) while the more newer ones have gone with other forms such as proportional representation (like Germany and Israel). This was that as new countries were being formed or overthrowing their old monarchies, they realized that the FFP was flawed in someways as they could see how it was in the countries that had it (usually looking at the UK) and being more modern times (1890 through 1950s) they went with PR, IRV or STV (single transferable vote) in which 3rd parties get a greater voice in government and the change of a 3rd party actually becoming a 1st or 2nd party is greater (like the German Greens or the Israeli lukid).

So if you want change... Real change with 3rd parties, you need to change the constitution. Of course the vested parties won't really be too keen on that but from my understanding a few states passed STV last year in some local elections so you'll start seeing 3rd parties on grassroots levels in some places.

For more info: http://www.fairvote.org/

Its not that hard to create a fake profile on FB. Even a person of the opposite sex than you.

A really neat trick is to put yourself in a relationship with the fake person and then have fake public love conversations to make other females think you are a normal guy. Then fake your alter ego cheating on you and then set your status to single.

Then you'll get sympathy from all the real females...

Not that I know anything about this though....

But seriously, it wouldn't be too hard to fake your gender on FB. Especially in a country where everyone basically dresses the role.

One might guess similar jokes have circulated concerning other dictatorships over the years.

I'm going to loose my mod points over this, but one of my interests happens to be Eastern Block humor. (Especially the Polish Eastern bloc joke about the Bank of Moscow)

Many jokes of that time period and area were always word of mouth (for obvious reasons) and many jokes ended up being reworded for the leaders and country it involved. Since there was no official publication of the jokes (as that would be treasonous) no one knew that they were copying each other until the after the 1990's.

example

Honecker and Mielke are discussing their hobbies. (both historical persons in charge of the Stasi in East German)
Honecker: "I collect all the jokes about me that are in circulation."
Mielke: "Then we have almost the same hobby. I collect those who bring the jokes into circulation."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_jokes

And then the Russian version:

"Comrade Brezhnev, is it true that you collect political jokes?" â" "Yes" â" "And how many have you collected so far?" â" "Three and a half labor camps."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_political_jokes

So the OP is most likley right in that he heard an East German version as you hearing a Russian version seperatley.

The "point" to me sounded like a bunch of bullshit cyberspeak about how the internet is going to turn government into a big drum circle where we all join hands and sing songs of peace and love.

Believe it or not, without the internet and blackberries, the protests in Tunusia and Egypt would not have gained the traction it did.

Now it seems that you are referring to the situation in the USA, but that is a bit more complicated than going into the streets and throwing rocks as most people are invested into the system and have no need to go into the streets to throw rocks.

". The reason for Gitmo is that we are effectively capturing enemy combatants that we cannot properly give Geneva Convention protections to because they do not fight in uniform, nor do they have a sovereign entity that can guarantee punishment for their illegal activities or failing that, who will feel the need or desire to protect our own imprisoned troops in exchange for protection of their imprisoned troops."

After WWII, German officers were hanged for not giving French and Soviet resistant fighters due process under the Geneva conventions. In their defense, the Germans said "They weren't wearing uniforms."

"If you don't like the laws of the country don't visit it. Ignorance of the law is never innocence."

The problem is that it seems the US believes the opposite is true. That if you commit an action on foreign soil that is legal there but illegal in the US, that you must come to the US and face trial even if you weren't a US citizen to begin with.

At least that is what some politicians are calling for...

"Wikileaks' supporters could raise a billboard encouraging support of Wikileaks' mission."

In the USA, the majority of billboards worth a hoot are owned by Clearchannel, who I have a feeling would not allow a pro-Wikileaks billboard to be posted.

Also, in that regard, do you think Mubarak would even consider stepping down if the Egyptians posted a billboard? I think not. Hence, the 'illegal' protests in the street.

This just shows the ignorance 'anonymous' has ...

I'm beginning to believe that anyone that refers to 'anonymous' as an organization is trolling.

And it seems to be happening on both sides of the argument, as the media and pro-government groups want to make these guys into the next Illuminati and the people doing the 'anonymous' posting seem to be getting a really raging epeep when they get attention like this even though they are in fact simply a bunch of people on a message board sharing porn most of the time.

I'll tell you what probably happen...

Some random person on the internet most likely went to a buys 'anonymous' forum (most likely 4chan) and posted "Let's go to this website and mash F5 a bunch of times!"

And it just happened that a few thousand people who read that said "Oh! Why didn't I post this first!" and proceed to go to that website and beat on their F5.

Then the page was in effect, slashdotted as they most likely had poor servers. Then proceed to review their IP logs and pick people at random to make an example.

Of course their are ignorant people who post 'anonymous', because majority of the people in the world aren't really that educated and if you put a large enough subset of people at any gathering, they tend to do stupid things (say a football mach riot in England).

But calling 'anonymous' ignorant is ignorant in itself because it assumes that that group is a unified organization but rather people who sit around and instead of having user names, they don't need to log into post and gather their porn pictures and lolcats.

Its like calling people who use "anonymous coward" on slashdot a corporation of single like minded collectivists who have one goal in mind.

These are simply individuals who post anonymous. Nothing more. Nothing less. Stop making it into something it is not.

Thank you.

The only place where two wrongs make a right is boolean algebra. Revenge/retaliation just continues a cycle of aggression and destruction.

Technically, the American Revolution and the French Resistance was illegal.

There's a trust fund setup to pay compensation to people who are injured by vaccines, that was some sort of compromise because big pharma wouldn't produce vaccines unless they got some sort of liability waiver. Well, if vaccines don't cause any harm, why is there a fund?

Because jury's can still award damages even in cases where scientific data that was provided was sound.

Even if it was obviously not the vaccine that harmed the person.

if anonymous is composed of human beings, it is subject to the sociological rules of any other movement in history. that's just reality.

Humans behave different in different situations. I thought any psychology major would know that.

Put a person in a crowd and they'll do what the crowd is doing. The police can attempt to remove the ringleaders, but the crowd has a mind of its own and therefore unpredictable. (Take the Fall of the Berlin wall which was almost spontaneous and had no central core leadership)

On the same note, put a man in a mask and a uniform and he'll be more likely to harm his fellow man with other men wearing the same thing.

Think of this situation as a rioting crowd of people wearing masks and uniforms. They are all there for different reasons. Some are protesting corruption, some are protesting economics, some are protesting religion, some are there just to loot, and some are there to vandalize.

Lets say a provocateur shouts at a man passing by, "that man burns puppies!", the mob puts asides whatever reasons they were there for and lynches the man.

The riot police come in and arrest the provocateur (or at least who they think it is), but the riot still is ensuing because most of the crowd is still doing their own thing, because the act of the lynching was not the original reason they were there..

I think that is what the OP is trying to say, this is just like how riots and lynchings work where things happen in a very unpredictable way.

After all most people who participate in riots and such events often aren't bad people, but rather get caught up in the moment.

With a group that calls itself Anonymous starts having people get picked off, whether they are "leaders" or not, what does that do to the psyche of the group as a whole?

The nice thing of an anonymous organization is that its own members don't know who each other are.

So not only can you not rat out other members, but members don't really know if the person was caught was actually a member.

And "members" is a wrong word for this because its more or less a group of people who communicate without sharing identities, but only words. No one belongs to anything, no one can identify an actual leader.

If a "leader" was caught, no one would notice his departure because the communications are so random to begin with. Obviously the problem is that anyone could impersonate anyone else but that doesn't seem to be a problem.

It's a rather strange phenomenon.